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Merged George H.W. Bush dead at 94

varwoche said:
May the heavens forgive me but... Bush II impressed me as ignorant, in over his head, fact-challenged, and as a person who made one of the biggest mistakes in modern history, one that will echo across time. At the same time he impressed me as a "gentleman" and a decent human being.
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Decent if you leave out the Iraq war damage I presume?
 
Apparently "Georgeisinhell' Twitter account has been suspended.

Anyone want to describe CE's link?
 
varwoche said:
May the heavens forgive me but... Bush II impressed me as ignorant, in over his head, fact-challenged, and as a person who made one of the biggest mistakes in modern history, one that will echo across time. At the same time he impressed me as a "gentleman" and a decent human being.
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Yeah, that comment kind of amused me as well. GWB may have had his flaws especially in his youth (unlike me, who was perfect in every way), but he genuinely seems to be a nice guy, loving father and husband. And I will 100% say that Obama strikes me the same way, and that Trump falls more than a little short on gentlemanly qualities (much like Clinton).
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
Apparently "Georgeisinhell' Twitter account has been suspended.

Anyone want to describe CE's link?
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The tweet I linked to just said "damn it's hot down here". It was a parody account with a presidential photo and the display name "George H.W. Bush". Had a good two dozen tweets and around 3K followers at the time I posted it. The particular tweet had around 200K likes and maybe 90K retweets. Totally went viral. Jeez, @jack is such a pussy.
 
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I never voted for George H.W. Bush but I respected him. I thought he did an excellent job in getting Iraq out of Kuwait. And best of all, he knew when to call off the dogs which, as a Vietnam vet, really impressed me. Bush, Sr. knew an invasion and regime change could be done relatively easily. It was the post-invasion environment that worried him, the price that would have to be paid. And his son proved him right.

I am still surprised he was voted out of office, that he failed to win a second term. And again, I didn't vote for him. But the lousy economy of the early 1990s did him in. Remember, "It's the economy, stupid."
 
newyorkguy said:
I never voted for George H.W. Bush but I respected him. I thought he did an excellent job in getting Iraq out of Kuwait. And best of all, he knew when to call off the dogs which, as a Vietnam vet, really impressed me. Bush, Sr. knew an invasion and regime change could be done relatively easily. It was the post-invasion environment that worried him, the price that would have to be paid. And his son proved him right.

I am still surprised he was voted out of office, that he failed to win a second term. And again, I didn't vote for him. But the lousy economy of the early 1990s did him in. Remember, "It's the economy, stupid."
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Yes, and Ross Perot was the coup de grace. He was the last of the old Republican presidents. He had more in common with Ike than Reagan.
 
Patrick Lang (who if you read the whole piece thinks a second term for Daddy Bush would have been preferable over Billy Boy):

[...] For whatever reason he was adamant that he was going to put paid to Saddam Hussein. In public he made a show of mispronouncing the Iraqi's name, saying Saad-em. In private he pronounced the man's name correctly. The deliberate slight was intentional.

He asked me what the Iraqis, then occupying Kuwait were likely to do. He understood that I had spent quite a lot of time in Kuwait and Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War. I told him that Saddam had been allowed to think that we would not defend Kuwait by the wavering and ambiguous statements made before the Iraqi invasion.

I told him that if he made it clear in an address that occupation of Kuwait meant an all out US military effort to drive them out of the country and that we would not necessarily stop at the border between Iraq and Kuwait that they would withdraw because they knew they could not fight the US successfully.

His response was that he did not want them to withdraw because they must be punished for aggression. [...]
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And then "they threw the babies out of the incubators" and the rest is history.
 
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Skeptic Ginger said:
Decent if you leave out the Iraq war damage I presume?
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It was a mistake of biblical magnitude. That was obvious then, and it's obvious now. It caused and continues to cause widespread human suffering.

If you or anyone else thinks that committing a mistake of this magnitude makes a leader an indecent person, that's not something that would prompt me to weigh in. But it's not how I see things.

Be careful. It's easy to paint yourself into a corner where all POTUSes must be considered as not decent people, if we apply standards fairly.
 
varwoche said:
It was a mistake of biblical magnitude. That was obvious then, and it's obvious now. It caused and continues to cause widespread human suffering.

If you or anyone else thinks that committing a mistake of this magnitude makes a leader an indecent person, that's not something that would prompt me to weigh in. But it's not how I see things.

Be careful. It's easy to paint yourself into a corner where all POTUSes must be considered as not decent people, if we apply standards fairly.
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The torture was not a mere mistake.

I have no problem with the idea that all or almost all presidents were/are less than decent people. I think it's a flaw in human nature that makes it to where in large civilizations, people who are less than decent tend to accumulate the most power.
 
Re: Iraq, there's also the fact that Bush and co flat-out FAKED the evidence of WMDs. In fact, if Iraq had actually had something like a nuke, we probably wouldn't have invaded. The UN weapons inspections basically served to prove that Iraq was an easy target for takeover.
 
varwoche said:
It was a mistake of biblical magnitude. That was obvious then, and it's obvious now. It caused and continues to cause widespread human suffering.

If you or anyone else thinks that committing a mistake of this magnitude makes a leader an indecent person, that's not something that would prompt me to weigh in. But it's not how I see things.
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If it were a mistake.

They lied about the evidence of WMDs
They used 9/11 as an excuse but instead of going after BinLaden, they went after Saddam.
IMO Bush Jr, influenced by Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, and having Daddy issues as well as wanting to be "a war President" (long story on that one) led to the decision to invade Iraq.

I find that a hard 'mistake' to just write off.

kellyb said:
The torture was not a mere mistake. ...
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And that ^, not a decent man, nope.


varwoche said:
Be careful. It's easy to paint yourself into a corner where all POTUSes must be considered as not decent people, if we apply standards fairly.
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To a degree, most were not decent people. Look at all the 'mistakes' that led to 54,000 deaths of US soldiers in Viet Nam just so said POTUSes could save face.
 
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kellyb said:
Re: Iraq, there's also the fact that Bush and co flat-out FAKED the evidence of WMDs. In fact, if Iraq had actually had something like a nuke, we probably wouldn't have invaded. The UN weapons inspections basically served to prove that Iraq was an easy target for takeover.
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Yeah but Daddy Bush's WMDs were the mentioned "incubator babies". In case you aren't aware of that, here's a brief summary:



To our days gullible people fall for transparent crap like little Bana from Syria, it's just propaganda 101.
 
Childlike Empress said:
Yeah but Daddy Bush's WMDs were the mentioned "incubator babies". In case you aren't aware of that, here's a brief summary:



To our days gullible people fall for transparent crap like little Bana from Syria, it's just propaganda 101.
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You ain't gotta tell me.
Geopolitics is some horrible, wild stuff.
 
kellyb said:
Re: Iraq, there's also the fact that Bush and co flat-out FAKED the evidence of WMDs. In fact, if Iraq had actually had something like a nuke, we probably wouldn't have invaded. The UN weapons inspections basically served to prove that Iraq was an easy target for takeover.
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I think the idea was to find evidence of chemical or radiological weapons, rather than "nukes". There are conflicting sources about that.

Rather than faked I think it was premature intelligence and the whole process was hastily worked out.
 
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